March 06, 2004
Adelaide Festival of Arts
Returned to Adelaide exhausted only to discover that it is the middle of a festival on the periphery of the global culture circuit. Suzanne has spent the last week going to Writers Week and visiting the art galleries. She mentioned Don Watson whom I'm currently reading.
I've a day or so in Adelaide and then I'm off again.
William Robinson, Creation landscape--fountains of the earth, 2002
Reading the catalogues of the various exhibitions I see that landscape is back along with the idea of the return of beauty and ecological concerns in postmodernity. There was a forum on this, but I have no idea what was discussed at this tribal gathering for artists called Artists Week. I guess the return of beauty is a gesture back to the Sydney Biennale 2000 with its faded gatekeeper role and hotline to New York as the renewed old centre. The 'search for Spirit ' is a gesture to Hegelian aesthetics and the idea of a progressive spirit which can be concretised by art.
William Robinson, Ridge and gulley in afternoon light, 1992